Modern contact centers are equipped to handle contacts of various different media types, including voice and video telephony, emails and IM contacts. In a conventional contact center, IM contacts are handled by an IM server of the contact center which generally operates in an analogous manner to the call server or switch of the contact center in handling voice calls.
Thus, instant messaging contacts received from external parties (customers) generate a contact entity in the management systems of the contact center. That contact entity, which can be represented by a token or file, or by an object in object oriented systems, is prioritised and allocated to an agent or, if no agent is available, placed in a queue. Queuing may be organised with queues for particular skillsets. For example, the IM contact may be made to an IM address of the contact center which is associated with a particular skillset or which is associated with, for example, a particular language. In this way, a contact can be queued for an agent who is likely to be equipped to deal with the customer in question. When the contact reaches the top of its queue, it is allocated to the next available agent, and the IM server creates an IM session between the agent and the customer associated with the contact, following which the agent and customer can “chat” with one another using IM message exchanges.
Treating IM messages in this way, using the model of voice calls, does not allow the contact center provider to offer any unique services in respect of IM customers.